News

The Oregonian: Intel Northwest Science Expo draws hundreds of high school scientists to PSU

Author: By Bill Graves

Posted: April 1, 2010

Among the hundreds of students competing in the state science fair at
Portland State University today will be three Portland freshmen who've
discovered scores of videos on the Internet that could trigger epileptic
seizures in some people.

Annelise Cummings, 14, and Alexander
Harding, 15, of Cleveland High School and Mariah Bruns, 15, of St.
Mary's Academy already won best of show in the regional Portland Public
Schools Science Expo, guaranteeing them a spot at the Intel
International Science and Engineering Fair next month in San Jose,
Calif.

But today they'll also try their luck representing
Cleveland High at the Intel Northwest Science Expo on the Portland State
campus, where judges will evaluate 525 science, engineering and
mathematics projects by 660 middle and high school students from Oregon
and southwest Washington.

The young scientists represent the top
third of competitors from eight regional fairs and are about half
girls, half boys, said Stephanie Jones, fair director.

"This is
valid science going on," she said of their projects.

Intel
Northwest Science Expo
What: A state science fair for the top third of competitors from
Oregon and southwest Washington in eight regional science fairs

Who: 660 students, 270 in high school and 390 in middle school,
exhibiting 525 projects in the sciences, engineering, computer science
and mathematics

Where: Portland State University

When: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. today

What's next: Top winners from state fair along with winners from
regional fairs go as Team Oregon to compete in the Intel International
Science and Engineering Fair, May 9-14 in San Jose, Calif. Cleveland
High's sole team in the state science fair analyzed 71 YouTube videos
for their potential to trigger seizures in children with photosensitive
epilepsy.

About one in 4,000 children has the condition in which
flashes of light can trigger reactions ranging from a momentary
absent-minded stare to a collapse and the violent shaking of a major
seizure.

The results of a Pokémon episode that aired on Japanese
television Dec. 16, 1997, suggests that even more children can be
affected by flashing light in some circumstances, the students said. One
scene of red and blue flashing lights in the Pokémon episode sent 685
children to the hospital and sparked milder symptoms, such as blurred
vision and headaches, in another 12,000 children.

The Cleveland
team set out to see whether YouTube videos on the Internet might pose
seizure risks to teen viewers. To eliminate sound as a variable in their
study, they focused on videos that used the top song for 2009 -- "Boom
Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas.

Using software that surveys
the flashing in videos to assess whether they have potential for
triggering seizures, the students analyzed 20 animations, 20 parodies,
20 montages and 11 videos. The 11 videos included seizure warnings, but
the others did not. They had predicted about 10 percent might pose
dangers, but found that 86 percent of them did.

The
students wore polarized glasses to protect themselves as they did their
research, but even then one video hit Harding with a headache and
another gave Cummings vertigo and disorientation, forcing her to stop.

The
three students launched their project in January and put scores of
hours into it with help from Cummings' mother, Ronda Royal, a clinical
psychologist and advisory board member for an online journal about
epilepsy. Royal advised the team as its adult sponsor and coach. The
young researchers asked the right questions, she said, and gave her some
insights about teen culture.

"It has been a learning experience
for me," she said.

Cummings proposed the project after reading a
story Royal showed her about a teenage girl who struggled with
disorientation from video games until the girl discovered she had
photosensitive epilepsy.

Cummings recruited Bruns and Harding
for the project because they all had participated together in several
science fairs during their middle-school years at Southeast Portland's
Winterhaven School.

Cummings said that with her interest in
entertainment and communications, Harding's deft computer skills and
Bruns' attraction to medical science, the students all brought their own
strengths to the research.

"A little bit of each of us is in
this project," she said. "That is why we don't want to let it go now."

The
students hope their work will foster some effort to screen YouTube
videos for the potential to trigger epileptic reactions, they said.

Cummings
said they'd also like to take their research a step further by
monitoring brain activities in young people as they watch videos. All
the researchers have now is what their software tells them.

"We
want to find out if (the videos) actually affect people," Cummings said.

For more information on the Cleveland team and their project,
go to their Web site.